…. and I love it. I love the colour of the trees all around us that seem to have hit their peak this past weekend. I want to whip out my camera at every turn, and yet those moments where I think of it – I don’t have it with me. Doesn’t that always happen? The cell phone shots just don’t cut it. I have a busy jam-packed weekend ahead but hope to sneak in a hike and will for sure take my camera.

Happenings of late: We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary on Sept. 16th. I still can’t really believe that much time has passed or that in fact we have been together for 17 years now. Time flies when you’re having fun. We had always discussed going away for our 10th (perhaps back to a lovely honeymoon-like destination) but have decided that trip will wait until I’m not preggo anymore and I can really have some fun. Instead we have “treated” ourselves to some home purchases we have needed for a while – exciting things like a ceiling fan for the family room (we removed the old one when we moved in and I couldn’t find one I liked to replace it), an area rug, and we ordered some furniture to allow some more seating when people are over! Lastly, we bought and put together Wil’s new set of bunkbeds for his room. He is absolutely thrilled with them, and has agreed for now to sleep on the bottom and save the top for naps and for when friends are sleeping over. I’ll take a pic of it soon and post it. It’s quite an enormous addition to his room, but provides some storage and also has a desk at one end, so I think it will be great for many years to come.

This past weekend we were in Ottawa for Robb’s niece’s wedding. It was at the National Gallery and was beautiful. Since the wedding was on Friday and it was a long drive, we decided to make a weekend out of it and stayed to take Wil to the children’s museum at the museum of civilization. He LOVED it and was completely pooped by the time we left and passed out in the car RAW. He really enjoyed seeing all of his young 2nd cousins at the wedding (and at the museum) and hasn’t stopped talking about when we would see everyone next.

Our last day in Ottawa was spent hooking up with a local photographer (@EastScene) I hooked up with through Twitter – HERE are some of his pics. You might notice some familiar faces on pic # 268! He also runs the music blog EastScene and takes some kick-ass band photos! I was trying to maximize the time we all had together and I had seen some of his shots from another twitter user that I follow (@ErinBlaskie) so reached out and thought maybe he could help us out with some much-needed family shots. We all met in Gatineau Park at the Mackenzie King Estates and spent about 2.5 hours hanging out and chasing Wil around. The pics I have seen so far turned out great so I can’t thank him enough! Here is one of my faves at the moment, which Brennan (our photographer) pointed out was Wil’s version of the Leonardo DiCaprio Internet Meme. So true and too funny! As you can see he had his trusty “doggy” with him for this pic – one toy he has recently liked to take with him on special occasions, so we had to include it in his pics!

Wil doing the Leo Strut!

So I’m being short and sweet today (for me anyway), but frankly QUITE stressed and busy with work these days but hope to at least use the blog as an outlet here and there, and start sharing some of my pics again! I have MANY! Also still working on my plans for next year’s blogging adventures and still very much looking forward to the conference next month. I can’t wait to meet all the amazing people whose blogs I love, and whose twitter streams sometimes get me through my day! I do plan to update and feature blogs/people I follow so that the rest of my readers can benefit too. Stay tuned!